Sustainable gardening: 10 ways to get equipped

If you’re new to gardening, can you borrow some tools from gardening friends or family to get you started? They may even pass some along to encourage you!

Keep an eye out for local tool pools, which will lend them out, or you can probably pick up some second-hand tools online.

Before you reach for a brand new spade in the garden centre, can you repair the one you have? Do your hoe or edging shears just need sharpening?

Tool maintenance for extending equipment life is a practice our gardeners learn early on in their careers, so it’s well worth looking after yours too.

Before splashing out on machinery such as rotovators or scarifiers, think about how often you will use it and where you will store it. Could you hire it instead?

Use jute or sisal string and raffia, rather than plastic or wire, for tying up plants. Jute webbing is also available on rolls, which can be used to make tree ties, as can an old bicycle inner tube, neatly cut.

An old cotton t-shirt or sheet can be cut into narrow strips for ties too – these are good for wall-trained fruit trees.

Labels are handy when sowing seeds and growing on young plants. Almost any light-coloured or plain plastic sheet can be cut up for this purpose – for example, old yoghurt pots or similar. A soft pencil is a good way to write the names on, as it can be over-written another time.

We often use short wooden stakes in our vegetable gardens and write on them – the ink can be sanded off so we can re-use the stakes another year. Slates are good too, and stylish! You can buy these online, made from recycled old roofing material; they will last you for decades.

If you need to prop up plants in the borders or vegetable patch, could you use pea-sticks instead of plastic-coated plant supports or mesh? Pea-sticks are short twiggy branches from birch or hazel trees, gathered when dormant (seeking the landowner’s permission first, of course!) and then stuck into the ground in spring to make natural supports. Some people weave long shoots of willow into beautiful upturned ‘baskets’ to perform the same function.

Construction is a big source of greenhouse gas emissions but not everything needs to be built with brand new materials. We regularly re-use construction materials like stone and wood in our gardens. Of course, for us this doubles up as preserving heritage and the look and feel of a place, but the principle is sound.

If you want to do some utility hard landscaping, or need a base for a shed, can you get what you need second hand? If you have access to some muscle to help lift, or can negotiate delivery, it can be easy to pick up used slabs of all kinds for free online. If you feel the need to polish them up, you can borrow a power washer.

If you must have that special paving or garden feature, can you get it locally or manufactured within the UK? The carbon footprint of transporting landscaping materials carved from quarries or forests on the other side of the planet carries a high environmental price tag with it.

Our gardeners love their sheds as places for work and storage. To extend the life of sheds, it helps to build them raised them off the ground on bearers, if you can – a solid base of slabs (or similar) beneath is best of all.

If you find your shed roof leaking, it can be re-covered. With regular repair and maintenance, a good shed should last for many years.

Most gardeners want to progress to a polytunnel or glasshouse but do you really need one? It’s a question we regularly ask ourselves in the Trust, as some glasshouses take a lot of upkeep and polytunnels need regular re-sheeting. Would a window sill or a small propagator (maybe with heat and lights) be enough? Or perhaps you could borrow a corner of someone else’s growing space for a few weeks.

That said, aluminium glasshouses are very long-lasting and can be recycled at their end of life. Both sheds and glasshouses are often offered on local online community groups and forums too.